Virgin Media Sucks

[Fiddybux]

I'm am using a 250 modem as Southwell suggests instead of the old grey NTL Home120....but I really don't have this throttling problem at all.

Do you guys use PeerGuardian or other IP blocker, e.g. Moblock. I would if I were you. Maybe this is why I don't get this issue (yet??).

[DCM]

cost you a small fotune to get BT to put a new line to your house where no line currently exists, and you will still get the same sort of issue's with BT.

Both are over selling their services, remember the BT is sold under lots of different company brands, and it is only ever a theoretical speed. The only way to get a garaunteed up/down rate is to get a business lease line

[budgio]

I had no probs with NTL (20 meg service) until Virgin took over and they decided i had to pay an extra £11 line rental for my phone service .
I signed up with NTL because they promised not to charge me line rental, just to get me onboard ,then as soon as Virgin took control the bill soared
So i downgraded to the bare minimum package and also demanded the free tv box to be installed
So now i,m paying £28 a month for 2mb broadband,tv(on demand), and phone.
I mainly use my connection for online gaming on pc,ps3,360 and wii etc and dont notice any difference than i did with 20 mb...

[terry.sc]

I'm on NTL/Virgin as well and don't have throttling problems even running p2p/torrent software. The trick is to avoid the publicised times of 4pm to 9pm and you can download/upload as much as you want at full speed Between those times the basic package is throttled for 5 hours when you reach the 300mb limit, but the next package up gives you 800mb before it's throttled which is why they wanted you to upgrade. If you can download/upload the database late evening or in the morning you should never have any problem.

I complained when Virgin took over about losing Sky One, even though I never watched it. Now on the XL TV package, phone and 4mb broadband for £30 a month.

[strobe]

Can anyone recomend a good security for a PC. running Mcafee at the moment and it is C*"p.
Sorry for hijacking this thread.

[CBRDEAN0]

I,m running NOD32. never had any problems with it and is works out to just £13 per year if you pay for 3 years up front.

I know a few others running NOD32 as well - they are happy with it.

[Col]

My exchange is across the road. I'm with talktalk/aol, paying £12.50 a month for 2MB and getting anywhere between 6MB and 20MB via an ethernet modem. Computer stays turned on nearly all the time and never suffers any "throttling".

The only problem I have is the computer is old and sometimes broadband can send info faster than the computer know what to do with it!

[Ian Wall]

I hope it's not BT, Virgin Media or Talk Talk.

Like most of you that are using Virgin Media that have posted on this thread, I have found that they have de-generated from an excellent organisation in the days of Richard Branson to now, as Jimmy has stated in starting this thread, as an absolutely crap service. Their Customer Services Department is now without doubt the worst of any organisation that I have come into contact with. I am contractually ‘locked’ into them for a further month. It is whilst looking into whom to go to that I found this aspect of Internet Providers interesting and post this here to provide everyone else an insight as to what is going on.

Simply put, three of the UK's largest ISPs (Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk) have decided to sell your private browsing history to an advertising broker. Yes, the entire list of every web page you visit gets sent to Phorm (the broker) in real time, as you click, so they can send you 'targeted advertising'. Naturally the ISP's are not too keen on telling their users this, they'd much rather feed us all platitudes about how it'll help combat phishing and how the targeted adverts will be so much better than the random ones we see today. In fact, they didn't even announce it to the UK press; we had to find out about it from the New York Times!

The above mentioned providers have apparently reached agreement with Phorm to sell your surfing destinations to enable them to target advertising more specifically at you. Bear in mind, a lot of the smaller ISPs actually use the services of these big three although there is not necessarily any obvious connection! This is an interesting opening link:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02...a_summer_2007/

The company mentioned Phorm have gone through several name changes in their time - not surprisingly since they apparently have their roots in spyware.

Additionally BT customers, beware. The ‘sanitised’ name for this Phorm program is Webwise. They very craftily tie it up with a so called security features.

There is a thread currently running on a BT support forum:

http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/th...art=0&tstart=0

where this is being debated. It is very much upto date and the BT staff do contribute. However if you were to read through it, and unfortunately it's over 20 pages long, you'll find that the staff have been frequently contradicting one another and Phorm employees contradicting them. Staff have been caught out lying in the thread too. It appears that BT has been less than honest about the whole matter.

The obvious solution to all the concerns being aired there is "find another ISP", that are categorically prepared to state that they have no intention of incorporating Phorm, or Webwise. However, as was pointed out on the BT website, various other smaller ISPs are actually owned by BT. Although it would appear that they have managerial independence at present, but for how long?

Make no mistake, even if you have logged in to oOple, any posts you make here are on an unencrypted (non-HTTPS) page and would be included in the profiler, as would any mail you checked via web-mail.

Also, do not be satisfied if you are told that you can opt-out of this scheme if you want to. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to matter if you opt-in or opt-out. The system only appears to check for the presence of the opt-out cookie *after* your browser request has gone through the profiler. So all you actually opt-out of are the targeted ads. Phorm still get the marketing data.


Useful informative information about all of this can be obtained from this link:
http://www.badphorm.co.uk:80/page.php?2

The closest real world analogy to what all these ISPs are doing is having your postman open all your mail, read it through for keywords and seal it back up so he can better target you with more relevant junk mail. Obviously totally unacceptable

I’m a nonconPhormist and I will not be conned by Phorm however its name is sanitised.
Ian

[Chequered Flag Racing]

Originally Posted by Fiddybux

I often get more than 3900mb down and 380mb or so up using http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/

just run a test on my Virgin setup using the above site

Last Result:
Download Speed: 1969 kbps (246.1 KB/sec )
Upload Speed: 188 kbps (23.5 KB/sec )

I have there 2mb Broadband, landline & TV package

[Southwell]

Im at a mates, he's got 20mb: Last Result:
Download Speed: 5541 kbps (692.6 KB/sec ) Upload Speed: 596 kbps (74.5 KB/sec )

[rocketrob]

seems as if finding a Virgin that Sucks would be a good thing






LOL......sorry, couldn't resist it

[dave g]

im on the WebSTAR EPC2100R2 modem if that helps,i was on the old modem until 6 months ago and that suffered from a lot of timeouts altho it was about 6 yrs old!

i did some downloading about 11 ocklock last night,8+gig of ufc and the average speed was bang on the 2mb speed,however what i have noticed is that if i upload at my max while downloading,my dl speed drops right down to about half.

i too use peer guardian..the isp's block some of the known peer address's i think so this helps,altho not much use in jimmys case except maybe download your stuff at night as said earler until you can find another solution..

dave

[Chequered Flag Racing]

Originally Posted by Chequered Flag Racing

just run a test on my Virgin setup using the above site

Last Result:
Download Speed: 1969 kbps (246.1 KB/sec )
Upload Speed: 188 kbps (23.5 KB/sec )

I have there 2mb Broadband, landline & TV package

Just uploading some scanned images and here's how it's running now

Last Result:
Download Speed: 917 kbps (114.6 KB/sec )
Upload Speed: 12 kbps (1.5 KB/sec )

Cable Modem : DOCSIS 1.0/1.1/2.0 Compliant
MAC Address : * * * * * * * *
Serial Number : * * * * * * **
Boot Code Version : 3.1.6d
Software Version : 2.94.1014
Hardware Version : 1.19

it's sloooooooooooooooooooooow

[Southwell]

Originally Posted by Chequered Flag Racing

Just uploading some scanned images and here's how it's running now

Last Result:
Download Speed: 917 kbps (114.6 KB/sec )
Upload Speed: 12 kbps (1.5 KB/sec )

Cable Modem : DOCSIS 1.0/1.1/2.0 Compliant
MAC Address : * * * * * * * *
Serial Number : * * * * * * **
Boot Code Version : 3.1.6d
Software Version : 2.94.1014
Hardware Version : 1.19

it's sloooooooooooooooooooooow

This is the problem, yes they half your connection speed but something else is happening which completely kills the connection so your not really getting half the speed, your getting hardly anything, looking at the results it seems to be the upload rate which is killing your connection. Complaint time

[CAClark]

The old fair usage policy is a gotcha, even if you have no bandwidth restrictions, if you hammer your connection with downloads in peak hours, you'll still end up getting pegged back.

Cheers!

[Southwell]

God help me, ive just had to sign up to Virgin 10mb as BT wouldn't install a line in my new house on direct debit, only payment card??
At least it's cheap though

[HKP]

I also agree that VM are getting a bit sucky of late, I find their customer service ranges from appalling to excellent depending on what call centre you get (apparently random).

The Terms of Service changes are a bit naughty as is the Phorm business.. Sadly, I cannot get any service other than cable it seems.

I must admit though that compared to the ADSL line I had at our old house the VM service is rock solid (Scientific Atlanta Modem) and the speed always hits the 2MB service we are signed up to when bench marking.

If you don't want your ISP profiling what you do and limiting your usage, I've heard the Onion Router stuff is very effective, it basically anonymises what you do from what i hear..

http://www.torproject.org/

*edit - TOR does actually look like it uses MORE bandwidth on your connection though sadly *

[markwilliamson2001]

Originally Posted by strobe

Can anyone recomend a good security for a PC. running Mcafee at the moment and it is C*"p.
Sorry for hijacking this thread.

AVG is the bollocks mate. Its also free from:

http://free.grisoft.com

HTH
Mark

[Fiddybux]

So a while back I said I had no problems with Virgin...but now I'm being throttled by 75% from 10mb to 2.5mb during peak hours. And to hit the limit all I have to do is download 1gb of data! This is crapper than crap!

I download loads of linux iso's, all the time. Most of these are 4gb each. It sucks.

So anyone got any recommendations for an alternative broadband supplier?

Anyone on Be? Or Tiscali? Or O2?

Thanks.

[Southwell]

Sky are the only cheap'ish' supplier who don't throttle. Virgin don't throttle after 9pm. Still crap though. If you are too far from the exchange you wont even hit 10mb though....